


Amelioration

by soft_october



Category: Hyper Light Drifter
Genre: Gen, POV Second Person, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:02:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27490918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soft_october/pseuds/soft_october
Summary: Decades since the Drifter disappeared, a child from the village goes searching for the reason the adults fear the Jackal.My contribution to the Pulse Fanzine
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11





	Amelioration

You have travelled far, child. 

There are not many that come out this way. But you are brave, heedless of the legends and the stories. It is safe. It has always been safe. Why should you not go out to the Jackal?

The elders are afraid, and they fill the ears of the young with warnings and tales about the time that was before. Your grandmother, especially. She says she used to be strong, that her skill and cunning once beat the greatest warrior of their time in a game of speed and skill. She must be lying. There is no strength in her old bones, in her paper thin skin. She is old, and the old are always afraid. You have climbed the peaks above the city, explored the ruins to the east, hacked through the forest with your father’s machete. In the south you discovered underground caverns filled with strange lights and machines, quietly being reclaimed by dirt and dust and creatures that move softly in the dark. None of it alarmed you! So why should you not go to the Jackal, the great statue that lies in the shadow of the mountains, and see for yourself? 

You set off early in the morning, with a small lunch tied up in a cloth your father prepared for you, a skin of water. You do not bring any weapons. Why should you? The way is clear from overgrowth, and are no enemies to bar your way. Some ravens fly off from age old ruins, blackened from what seems like centuries of decay. Birds of a more musical hue chirp in the trees above you, cheering the sun’s slow journey about the sky. You have no map, but one is not needed, not to find the Jackal, which pulls you ever onward, like you are a bead slowly sliding down a string. Your feet take you further and further from the town where you were born, the town that has grown up with you, spreading out like a ripple in the lakes to the west, crowded with shops and laughing children and adults who shake their heads and smile. 

You are almost there. 

You ignore the dread that grows in your heart. 

You ignore the sudden silence of the birds overhead. 

It is just your imagination. There is nothing to fear. Not here. 

You are right. (You knew you were, you knew the stories were just stories.) You reach the statue, and beams of sunlight slip through the cracks in the stone, bathing the clearing with light. The elders are fools. There is nothing here. 

There is something here. 

There, in the dirt. It’s almost hidden by debris, aged beyond recognition. 

It's a helmet, you think, a helmet and a scrap of cloth. Perhaps it was red, once, but that was long ago. 

Around it, a field of flowers blooms. 


End file.
